


The Reverberation of a Blazing World

by busaikko, mific



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Fanfiction, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 14:39:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1822087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/busaikko/pseuds/busaikko, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mific/pseuds/mific
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a set of aerialist automatons is sold and souled, and in which a machine loves and is loved. A steampunk adventure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lives in Pieces (in which a set is found and a plan is made)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Combination for this life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1782457) by [theeverdream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theeverdream/pseuds/theeverdream). 



"We came as a set," the clockwork man told Rodney easily enough when he turned it on. "We were aerialists."

"Hm," Rodney said. He had no idea why the Littlefield model for automatons included programming for conversation. Everything he needed to know should be obvious in the wires and twisted metal spread out on the worktable before him. He found it unnerving to look from the pile of unjointed fingers and toes, to the rusted holes in the torso, to the clear pale eyes that looked sideways at him. The clockwork man couldn't turn his head, obviously, as he had neither neck nor _body_ , but Rodney felt like he would if he could.

"There were four of us," Rodney was told. "We were built in Afghanistan, for export. Mitch, Dex, Holland, and me. I'm Sheppard."

Rodney sighed. "Do you have to talk?"

Sheppard had a beautiful steel mouth, curving like a bow, the lower lip full. "I'm an aerialist," he said again. "Can you fix me? Because we were given as a gift to a king. We gave him our best performance, and he said it was perfect, and then he had us smashed down to gears. But I still remember..."

"You've been in a box for a long time," Rodney told him, irritated into actually engaging in conversation. "There are no more kings to be entertained. There are no more circuses of flight or aerialists. _If_ I can assemble you, and _if_ your programs are still any good, then you _might_ have a future in the mills, or in energy farming, or possibly the might of Ba'al's automaton corps in the military."

"Oh," Sheppard said, and that beautiful curve to his mouth stilled. He closed his eyes.

Rodney set the magnifying lenses to his eyes, picked up a blade, and started the delicate work of opening Sheppard's skull. The wig had been attached with adhesive that had toughened and needed to be chipped away, and then the screws attaching the cranium plate had to be located, and lubricated, and gently eased out. It didn't help that Sheppard kept trying to sneak peeks at what Rodney was doing, as if he was worried that he was going to have his brains slopped out, erased, and reprogrammed.

The mechanical man was disturbing on _several_ levels, Rodney decided. Not just the loquacity, but also a disturbing self-awareness. Not what many people wanted in a servant or laborer.

He got the last screw undone and used his magnetized pincette to remove it to the labeled glass dish, and then eased the plate away. Sheppard's eyes tracked it until Rodney set the plate down out of view, on the scales first, and then cut a neat hole in the cushioning foam. Rodney had never seen such a thick layer, but then he'd never worked on an actual aerialist. He imagined there was the risk of falling to protect against.

The inside of Sheppard's head was lined with neat trays of flat crystals, and Rodney felt himself grinning in fierce joy and unable to control himself. He'd heard rumors, but he'd never yet stumbled over an Ancient neural processor. Figuring out how it worked was going to be fun. He made a cursory sketch, and then popped one of the crystals out to examine it under the light.

"Don't," Sheppard said, voice slowed and cracking. "Hurts."

Rodney put the crystal back. "You have pain receptors?"

Sheppard made a slight grinding noise that Rodney interpreted as clearing his throat. "It's impossible to learn aerialism without both pain and fear," Sheppard said. Quoting someone, Rodney supposed. Someone with a terrible teaching technique.

"Did they also program you for enjoyment?" Rodney asked, out of curiosity. He'd never found fear a good motivator. That was his professional reason for allying with the resistance movement; revenge was his personal reason, but not many people knew that. Rodney had been in exile in the far North during the last regime change, and hadn't been able to keep Jeannie out of Ba'al's hands. After returning to the City he had set up business as nothing more than a junk dealer and mender of toasting-forks, but it hadn't taken him long to find Zelenka and through him, the people who wanted violent change.

Sheppard blinked in response, in a way that suggested he'd have shrugged if he had shoulders. "I had loyalty. I came as a set."

"You said that already." Rodney frowned. "Have we reached the limit of your conversational ability?"

Sheppard's eyes rotated as far to the side as they could, staring straight at Rodney. "I _am_ a set," he said. "Help us?"

Rodney frowned. "You have memory uploads?" he asked, reaching for a velvet-lined tray. "I've heard about the properties of crystal. I suppose... not wireless, certainly, back in your day, but..." He grabbed a chalkboard tablet and a piece of dustless chalk and began taking notes on the crystal arrays. "I imagine it was cheaper to replace an aerialist than to try and repair it if it fell from a tightrope, or whatever."

"Whatever," Sheppard repeated. He sounded sarcastic, and that... should be impossible. "We never fell."

Rodney's fingers twitched with suppressed greed. "You can learn," he postulated. "Not just be reprogrammed, but... artificial sentience." He'd read Langford's papers, of course, but he'd always assumed she was a theorist. "All four of you – Sheppard, Mix, Fix, and Norway?"

Sheppard looked away. "Holland's process was interrupted by a crowbar," he said, voice low. "There's hardly anything left. But Mitch and Dex. Yeah."

Rodney was starting to feel gleeful. He was more intelligent than Zelenka, his rival in the resistance, but recently he hadn't had any brilliant new inventions to demonstrate his superiority. He did have a prototype of a raygun, but currently it was two meters long and required half a ton of complicated refrigeration to work. Or as Sam Carter, chief fabricatrice of the movement, had told him, _really only useful if you can make an enemy stand still on a big red X in your lab, McKay_. Four automatons, with Ancient processors in their heads and – yes – he had his analysis of the simulacra Ba'al had created as a diversion, that he'd been itching to put into practical use. That would show... everyone.

He got up and crossed the laboratory to his bed, which he dragged away from the wall. He had a loose floorboard; he knew it was cliché, but it also worked. He pried it up with a screwdriver, undid the latches holding the neighboring boards in place, and set them all aside as he contemplated his safe. One mistake with the combination lock and the whole place would be instantly incinerated, but Rodney never made mistakes.

He clicked the tumblers into place, hauled the heavy iron door up, and studied his treasures with a great feeling of pride and contentment. Five years' worth of combing through refuse and rubble, and he had the largest collection of Ancient technology of anyone in the City, he imagined. FIt helped that Ba'al had had all the old temples demolished and their relics destroyed – Rodney had a good side business as a very efficient destroyer of relics. After, of course, he'd stripped them of all useful parts.

He had a lot of crystals, and even more importantly, he had a dynamotronic transcripticon for reading the crystals' contents and manipulating new programs into their matrices. He took it out now, as well as a leather crystal carrying case. He locked up, put his bed back, and moved everything over to a second worktable. This was going to be a big project. Maybe the biggest of his life. 

"Who was the king when you were fabricated?" he asked Sheppard as he opened the transcripticon and began cranking it slowly, until the blue and amber lights gave off steady light.

"His Galactic Majesty Anubis," Sheppard said promptly, and then frowned in worry. "I'm programmed to be respectful," he added slowly. "Is respect towards Anubis _disrespectful_ to the new king?"

"There are no kings. I told you that." Rodney leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers, deciding what to do first. "We have Ba'al now, but he considers himself a god. 

Fortunately for _you_ ," Rodney went on, steering the conversation away from dangerous directions, "I happen to be familiar with the technology Ba'al used to make his ten mechanical copies. I saw one, once. It was remarkable. Indistinguishable from a real man from the outside." He held up one of Sheppard's kneecaps. "The gleaming steel look is passé."

"I had a costume," Sheppard said defensively. "Black silk."

"I'm sure you were gorgeous," Rodney tossed off absently. He wasn't prepared for the bleak sorrow that somehow flitted across Sheppard's immobile features – it was those _eyes_ – or the way his jaw seemed to set with stubborn anger. "You were created to be a beautiful distraction. That bothers you?"

For a moment he thought Sheppard wasn't going to answer, but apparently it just took a while for Sheppard to find words. "We thought we were artists," Sheppard said finally. "We were the creators, not the creation. But it turned out we were just toys. And toys get broken and are thrown away."

While Rodney wasn't a fanciful person, he couldn't think of a way to describe Sheppard's tone that wasn't _bitter_. Or _furious_.

"I don't make toys," Rodney said, dismissively, which appeared to be the right tack to take with Sheppard, if his smirk was anything to go by. "But once I get the rest of your _set_ out of your head, we'll get each of you in a modern automaton unit. With a few... unique... modifications."

"Thanks," Sheppard said. "Remind me to shake your hand when I can."

"Shut up," Rodney said, embarrassed. "I'm going to pull your crystals now. So you should power down. I'll see you in a while."

Sheppard closed his eyes obediently. "Night," he said, his features stilling. Rodney waited a moment, just to be sure, and then started taking him apart.

o~0~O^O~0~o

Finding the money to create three automatons was tricky, especially since Rodney didn't want to give away exactly what he was creating. He worked on the project in his spare time for several months, experimenting with artificial skins and muscles, procuring molds for good-sized, even teeth, and painstakingly transcribing data from Sheppard's crystal array to the new ones he was building. When the stress got too much for him, he turned Sheppard on and spent long hours arguing with him and beating him at chess. He suspected Sheppard let him win out of pity, and got some degree of revenge making Sheppard model all the new wig designs.

Rodney waffled over who to approach about the money problem, and finally decided to make an appointment with Elizabeth Weir, who was the highest-ranking resistance member he knew. She didn't particularly like him, but Rodney performed occasional small services for Ba'al; she owed him for the intel he brought back, details about air ducts and sewers, even the occasional news of personnel transfers.

Elizabeth was gracious and met with Rodney at a tea shop on the mezzanine level of Central Station.

"Aerialists," she said, with an indulgent smile. "That's unique."

Rodney set his cup down on the saucer and leaned forward. "Aerialists destroyed by Anubis, with no love for the Goa'uld, and possessing artificial sentience." 

"Can they be programmed to fight?" Elizabeth asked.

"They can be _taught_ to fight," Rodney said, tapping his forefinger on the table to emphasize his words. "They've got an unimaginably vast memory capacity. And their appearance is so human you wouldn't look twice at one if it passed you on the road."

Elizabeth still didn't look convinced, but she nodded and took a card and pencil out of her reticule. On it she wrote a name – _E. Lorne_ – and a room number in a boarding hotel. "Persuade Lorne that he wants them, and I'll pay," she said. "He wants to head up a team of his own, after the last one he was in ran into... trouble." Her mouth thinned, and Rodney assumed she meant they were injured, dead, or worse than dead.

"Thank you," Rodney said, his mouth awkward with the attempt to convey sincerity. "He'll want them. I know he will."

"I have faith in you," Elizabeth said, and gave Rodney a fond smile.

Rodney woke Sheppard up as soon as he got home, demanding a precise summary of the abilities of each member of his set. Sheppard cooperated, grumbling that it would be easier if he just activated the others as well and asked them directly.

"You're more talkative than Dex, and less smug than Mitch," Rodney said, and then took a deep breath. Time to break the news. "I found a buyer – a potential buyer, but once he finds out your skills and capacities, I have complete confidence that he'll take your whole set."

Sheppard stared at him. "I thought we were friends," he said, crossing his arms and tightening his jaw in a very human-like manifestation of hurt feelings.

"You think I should have fixed you for free?" Rodney asked, busy setting up the pantograph to copy out some diagrams that looked impressive but would be useless if they fell into the wrong hands. "How would I have bought all your pretty new pieces?" Sheppard didn't say anything. Rodney sighed and slapped a page of notes down in the tray with unnecessary force. "If you were a man, you'd have been paid for your aerial performances. Good money – enough to buy food, rent a room, go out and have fun when you wanted." He spread his hands. "Some people have tools that help them make money. That's what you are – a machine. Your job is to work so someone else gets paid. In this case, me."

"I could help you here," Sheppard said, jerking his chin to indicate the workshop.

Rodney gave him a weighty look. "And you'd be satisfied hiding indoors the rest of your existence, fetching this and dismantling that, instead of dashing about raiding enemy strongholds and blowing stuff up."

Sheppard's shoulders dropped.

"You'll have fun," Rodney said bracingly. "And you can always come back and visit." He lowered the heavy glass plate over the tray and beckoned Sheppard over. "Copy this stuff," he said, gesturing comprehensively. "And then I'll show you how to make explosives out of simple household chemicals."

"Okay," Sheppard said, subdued. Rodney resolutely did not let himself feel bad, not even a little bit.


	2. Delights and Killing Agonies (in which a set is sold, and trained, and souled)

"Did we _have_ to make the sale here?" McKay was querulous. He looked down at the ground far below the dirigible mooring platform and swallowed. 

Evan shrugged. "It's safe from Ba'al's spies, and I need to transport them, anyway. If what you've told me about these automatons is true, they shouldn't be bothered by the height."

" _They_ aren't, but I most certainly am," muttered McKay. "Well, come on, let's get on with it."

Evan passed over the payment, and McKay gave him the initiation codes printed on a slip of paper. He stepped onto the air-yacht he'd moored to the platform, and opened a large case. Inside, the three automatons were packed in straw. McKay went to the first and pulled back a black cloth band around the left wrist, revealing a concealed socket on the inner side. He inserted a small brass key and gave it a complicated series of clockwise and anti-clockwise twists. The automaton opened its eyes, and sat up. 

"This is Lorne," said McKay. "You belong to him, now."

"I'm Sheppard, " said the automaton. Evan had heard about the new models and he'd seen one of Ba'al's clones, but it was still a shock, incredibly lifelike and with unruly dark hair. Its odd, light eyes slid past him and fixed on his dirigible. "Is that a–"

"Yes, yes," said McKay. "I told you Lorne would bring an airship." He looked at Evan. "They didn't have them in Sheppard's day."

The…Evan didn't know how to think of it. It wasn't a man, but it looked like one. Sheppard's face broke into a wide grin and Evan was struck by how beautiful it – _he_ – was. Damn it, they _looked_ male, even though he knew that they weren't, they couldn't be. He wrenched his thoughts away from perverse speculations.

"Are we going to fly?" asked Sheppard, bounding up eagerly and heading for the dirigible. 

McKay shot Evan a look. "See?" he said, smug. "Aerialists. It's programmed into them."

Evan grabbed Sheppard by the arm. "Whoa, not so fast. You'll do what I say, when I say. Let's get your friends unpacked."

"We're a set," said Sheppard.

"Yeah, I heard," said Evan, suppressing a smile. 

"How fast can it go?" asked Sheppard, his eyes straying back to the airship. 

"Depends on the wind," said Evan. "The engine alone can push her along at fifty miles per hour."

" _That_ fast? Wow," said Sheppard, eyes wide.

McKay had been initiating the other two automatons. One was tall with an unevenly-cropped red-brown wig. Like Sheppard, he was dressed in denim work pants, with a dark brown shirt where Sheppard's was black, and a leather wrist-band covering the key-socket.

"This is Dex," said McKay. "Sorry about the hair. The unit came with an extensive hairpiece, but there was an accident with a soldering iron, and I had to cut the rest off. Anyway, you probably don't mind them being utilitarian. They're not in the circus now."

Dex nodded at Evan, but said nothing. He reached out and hooked a finger through Sheppard's belt, pulling him back from the edge. Sheppard looked annoyed. 

The third automaton stepped onto the platform. He was tall, too, in a dark blue shirt and with close-cropped hair less unruly than Sheppard's. "Hi," he said, extending a hand. "I'm Mitchell, but you can call me Cam."

Odd. Evan frowned but shook its hand. _His_ hand.

"They've all got basic social programming," said McKay, pushing wisps of straw back into the empty case and snapping the latches shut. "I had to repair them extensively, which meant upgrading their microcircuitry. They seem to be…adapting more rapidly than I'd expected." 

"Long as they can take orders," Evan said. "They'll be no use in the fight against Ba'al unless they're trainable."

"Oh, they're trainable," said McKay, pushing the case under the yacht's bench seat unit with his foot. "They're programmed for loyalty above all, though, so try not to give them orders that conflict with that." He leaned over the yacht's rail and struggled to lift the mooring rope free of the bollard.

Sheppard came to help him, setting a hand on the rope. McKay stilled, his mouth drawn tight. "I, I hope you'll be…" he said unhappily.

"It's okay, Rodney," Sheppard said. "We'll be fine. We'll get to fly again."

"Yes, well," said McKay, looking exasperated, "and of course that's all that matters." He patted Sheppard's hand awkwardly. Sheppard grinned and slapped him on the shoulder, and helped him lift the rope free. 

McKay released the yacht's brake and its clockwork mechanism set the propellers whirring. Slowly, but gaining speed every minute, the craft moved away, gradually losing height. "So long, Rodney," called Sheppard, and McKay waved in response, until the curve of the yacht's striped blue and yellow balloon blocked the gondola from view. 

Evan watched the yacht sink out of view, gradually drifting to the left. "Why isn't he flying straight?" he asked. 

"Rodney doesn't like heights," said Sheppard, watching beside him. "He keeps his eyes shut when he's up this high."

Evan raised his eyebrows, looking at all three of his purchases. "I trust you're not afflicted with that problem?"

Dex snorted, and Cam grinned. "No, we like it. Trapeze, high wire, acrobatics." He punched Sheppard's arm. "Sheppard used to be fired out of a cannon, through a hoop."

Evan waved them towards the airship. "That'll come in handy. Come on, get on board, we've some distance to go to the training camp." 

Grinning, Dex sank to one knee and cupped his hands, and before Evan could object, Sheppard had run and stepped up into Dex's hands and was being flung skywards. He arced over the dirigible's railing in a graceful double somersault and landed showily on the deck. Cam dived over the rail and rolled, bouncing to his feet, and Dex flashed white teeth at Evan and jumped, balancing dangerously on the rail, then leaping to catch the dirigible's rigging and swing himself around in a full circle before dropping lightly beside his companions. All three of them made a leg and bowed, circus style. 

"Very impressive," said Evan, shaking his head. "Not exactly programmed for stealth, were you?" He unhitched the mooring hawser and clambered over the railing. "We're going to have to work on that."

o~0~O^O~0~o

"Think you can turn us into soldiers?" Sheppard asked. He was standing with Evan, watching Cam and Dex fire at targets and waiting his turn on the makeshift range at the Colorado training camp.

"Sure as hell hope so," said Evan. "Otherwise I've wasted a truckload of money on the three of you." He shot Sheppard a glance. "You all seem to be picking it up okay."

"Yeah. We're good at the physical stuff," said Sheppard. "You know we can't kill humans, right? And Jaffa are human."

"That's not the plan. Ba'al's got an automaton militia as well; they're our target. We'll be a strike force: special ops." 

Sheppard was silent. Was he thinking? Did automatons think the same way humans did or was it all gears whirring and switches clicking over, like a difference engine? "The Jaffa are just as much automatons as we are, y'know," he said, finally, casting a cool green-gold eye at Evan. "With the mind-restraints Ba'al uses. Not like they've got free will."

"What about you?" Evan winced, wondering if he'd offended Sheppard. Wondering why he was engaging in philosophical debate with a machine.

"Pretty much," said Sheppard, looking amused, not upset. "Other than the not killing humans thing. Rodney said our processors are complex enough to handle ethical dilemmas and paradoxes without 'melting into slag', as he put it. He didn't set any other limits on us."

"He broke a handful of laws. McKay doesn't seem the criminal type."

"They took his sister," Sheppard said. "To be a fabricatrix in the automaton factories. Rodney hasn't seen her for four years. He joined the resistance after that. He still does contract work for Ba'al, but he told me he manages to fuck it up, carefully, in ways that can't be traced back to him."

Evan nodded; it explained a lot about McKay. He watched Dex blast a hole bang in the middle of the target with his dragon, almost destroying it, then rapidly reload the pistol-sized blunderbuss. "Dex seems a little…black and white," he said. 

Sheppard shrugged. "That's just him. Things are good or bad for Dex: no middle ground." He grinned at Evan. "Lucky for you, he's decided the resistance's good. Thinks you're okay, too." 

"I'm relieved," said Evan. His tone was wry but it was true, nonetheless. The aerialists might legally be his property, but Sheppard was right: they were complex enough not to be mere puppets, taking orders mindlessly. Evan needed them to think and adapt in a combat situation. No plan ever survived contact with the enemy, especially when that enemy was Ba'al. 

"Mitch – Cam – seems pretty easy-going," said Evan, watching him step up and pepper a target with bullet holes. The targets had red dots that showed the weak points, where a shot could do real harm to an automaton rather than ricocheting off. Cam hit every mark. 

"He'll go along with what Dex wants, up to a point. It's clearer for him, too." Sheppard rubbed the back of his neck, an oddly human gesture. Evan wondered who he'd picked it up from. "The time before, I mean. With the king, Anubis. I've only got fragments, and Dex even less. Cam's memories of that time are more intact. He's not keen on the Goa'uld." He frowned. "I…it's not that _I_ am, but I remember…wanting to please the king."He glanced at Evan, clearly wrestling with the kind of paradox McKay had mentioned. "What McKay did with our processors, it's changing all that. We were programmed for unthinking respect, but that's going."

"I'd noticed," said Evan, dry, and Sheppard snorted. Evan frowned. "McKay said you were programmed for loyalty, but not to the Goa'uld, right?"

"Used to be," said Sheppard. "We served Anubis loyally – didn't stop him smashing us to bits so no one else could see us perform," he added bitterly. Evan went to speak, but Sheppard raised a hand. "That's all gone, too – blind loyalty to the Goa'uld. We're loyal to each other now."

"And the resistance?" Evan asked, wondering if Sheppard was sophisticated enough these days to lie convincingly.

"Yeah," Sheppard said easily. "It'd be better without snakes setting themselves up as kings or gods. Besides," he cut his eyes sideways at Evan. "You're our leader. We're loyal to you."

"Okay," said Evan, and cleared his throat, pleased.

o~0~O^O~0~o

The set had practiced aerial maneuvers all day, soaring between specially erected dirigible platforms while Evan watched, heart in mouth. They hadn't fallen once, but he was exhausted; like McKay, he wasn't good with heights, though pride made him hide it.

They'd made excellent progress in the last few weeks, and Evan thought they were nearly ready for a mission. He'd had them kitted out in black uniforms, which Sheppard liked, saying it reminded him of his old aerialist costume. Evan had managed to beat some rudimentary covert skills into them, and they hardly ever posed or bowed now, after a daredevil stunt.

He stuck his head into the gym. Dex was doing endless 360-degree full-body circles around a high bar while Cam and Sheppard hurtled past each other between trampolines, somersaulting in mid-air. He shook his head and left them to it. 

After a meal at the mess, he set up his easel on a balcony and began painting from memory, trying to capture the aerialists as he'd seen them earlier that day, bodies arched, soaring against the blue sky in their training jeans. He lost time, working out the exact curve of trunk and legs, swan-dives or back-flips, that moment of full extension before they curled into a tuck.

"I like it." Evan jumped, but it was only Sheppard, leaning in the doorway behind him in his black uniform. "Didn't know you could do this."

"I don't get much time to," said Evan, stretching a crick out of his back.

Sheppard moved forward and gazed at the half-finished picture. "We look like that?"

"Yeah," said Evan. "To me, at least."

Sheppard nodded. "That's the part I like best. Flying." He shrugged. "I know, we need the other skills, too, with the guns and knife-throwing and hand-to-hand training, but this," he gestured at the painting. "This is when I feel alive."

Evan considered this. Were they alive? They were sentient, he was pretty sure, but alive? He shook off the thought. It didn't matter. They were his team and they were weapons in the cause; that was the main thing.

"I like that you painted this," Sheppard said softly, right there, behind his shoulder. Sheppard had gotten better at stealth than Evan'd realized, The lack of body-heat to give him away helped, of course.

Sheppard was a little too close for comfort, but it was pleasant having someone take an interest. Secret training camps weren't hotbeds of art appreciation. He tilted his head towards Sheppard. "You must have had billboards in the old days, for the circus?"

Sheppard nodded. "At first. Not after Anubis bought us. He wanted us for himself. Had all the old posters gathered up and burned."

"Pity," said Evan. He'd have liked to see an old-fashioned painting of Sheppard as an aerialist, black silk costume and all.

Sheppard was still staring at Evan's painting. "I like that no matter what happens, wherever this is, we'll be flying."

Evan turned and looked up at him, startled that Sheppard had seen why he'd painted it, why he'd tried to capture them. He wasn't prepared when Sheppard bent his head and kissed him, lips cool and firm, one hand coming up to tilt Evan's face into the kiss.

"What are you? Hey, no." Evan pushed Sheppard back. "What the hell was that?"

Sheppard's eyes were hooded, his face, which had been open and wondering when he was looking at the painting, was shuttered. "Wanted to," he said. "Been thinking about it."

"But why?" Evan wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, baffled. 

"Been getting…feelings. About you." Sheppard shrugged. "Think I maybe…love you."

"Feelings?" Evan, repeated, disbelieving. "You don't have _feelings_ , you're an automaton." He grabbed Sheppard's arm. "You can't _love_ me." He shook his head. "You're confused, Sheppard, machines can't love. You should go see McKay – your processors must be acting up."

Sheppard backed away, his mouth set. Evan felt a pang. Even now, holding himself rigid, face deliberately blank, he was stunning. If he'd been human…But he wasn't human. 

"Go see McKay tomorrow. Get a damn overhaul," Evan said.

"Yeah," said Sheppard, turning away. "Sorry. My mistake."


	3. No Longer Like a Thing Apart (in which a set becomes a team, and a machine loves and is loved)

"Teyla's got new information on Ba'al's movements," Elizabeth said. She was wearing her habitual red and black trouser suit and had her hair in a neat chignon; nothing that might cause a casual observer to suspect her involvement with the resistance. But Evan knew she'd been involved with the government back before Ba'al crushed it beneath his godlike boots, and her connections to surviving military and political figures made her formidable.

Evan kicked his feet up on the edge of the coffee table and leaned his chair back on two legs. He hated these weekly meetings. Elizabeth's job was to coordinate all the various teams in the resistance and supply the intelligence necessary for tactical planning. But Evan often felt that while she was great with the big picture, she was out of touch with how things were on the ground. No one ever bled out in _her_ arms. "Hope you don't mind me saying, but we got our asses kicked by Ba'al – or his automatons and Jaffa – the last three times we tried to catch him in his lair. I thought we were going to try and stay low for a while. Hit supply routes, disrupt communications." He spread a hand. "Recoup."

Elizabeth frowned but didn't say anything, just looked pointedly over at Teyla, her second in command.

"I've heard good things about the team you are training," Teyla said, preternaturally calm. Evan had always thought that she was a bit odd, but recently he'd started to wonder if she was human. He'd fought side-by-side with her on several occasions and never seen her bleed, but that might just be because she was so merciless in dispatching her enemies that they never had the chance to hurt her. Of course, he'd also never known Elizabeth to sleep, but if he let his mind run that way, pretty soon he'd be suspecting everyone he knew of being automatons.

His life was hard enough just with worrying that the machines he worked with possessed sentience, and maybe even souls.

"They haven't been on any major ops yet," Evan said. "We were going to raid a couple of warehouses, see how they handle going up against Jaffa warriors and other automatons."

"Ba'al captured O'Neill's team outside Washington two days ago," Teyla said. Evan's feet hit the floor as he sat up fast. Damn. They'd trained _him_ when he'd first joined the resistance. He liked them all. "To the best of our knowledge, Teal'c's been sent to be reprocessed, Jack and Daniel are being held as political prisoners, and Sam – " Teyla picked up a long cardboard tube, pulled out a map, and set it on the desk and spread it out, weighing each corner with a small stone "– is being transported via airship along the route here." She indicated a red line running across the country, with crosses marking Goa'uld strongholds that could be used for refuelling.

"Risky trying to get on board a prisoner transport," Evan commented, getting up to see for himself. "They fly too high to approach from above, and they've got cannons and flamethrowers."

Teyla tapped her finger at the endpoint of the route. "We don't want you to intercept the transport. As you can see, Ba'al's having Sam taken to his Sky Palace. She's a fabricatrix," Teyla added, a hint of impatience coloring her tone at Evan's apparent lack of comprehension. "And she's been working with your friend McKay on the creation of automatons that can pass for human, even up close. Imagine living in a world where Ba'al's spies weren't brain-restrained Jaffa, but looked and acted just like you or me."

Evan nodded, trying to look innocent of his earlier thoughts. "That would be terrible," he agreed, and redirected the conversation. "So you think Ba'al plans to use her team as hostages to force her to upgrade his automatons."

"We've planted controlled leaks in our encrypted correspondence," Elizabeth said. "Radek has special pigeons trained to fall into enemy hands. To Ba'al's Trusted Services, hopefully it looks as if the knowledge Sam possesses is crucial to the Resistance, and her capture has thrown us into chaos."

Evan frowned. "She does possess crucial information. And if I know Sam, she'll pretend to go along with Ba'al for her team's sake, but actually sabotage as much as possible before they're all killed."

"Which is why your team is going to infiltrate the Sky Palace, locate Sam, and bring her to a secure surface location. If you can, neutralize as many of the automatons as possible," Teyla added. "We know Coulson and Brooks have been summoned to the palace, and with Sam there as well, it may be the first time since their creation that there's more than one simulacrum automaton in a single location." She reached into her tube again and took out a thick pile of blueprints, air current charts, and surveillance cyanotypes. "We'll be conducting a simultaneous assault and extraction on the Old Gaol. And if all goes well, the modifications Rodney and Sam made to Teal'c's brain-restrain will allow him to upload a virus as soon as he's connected to the reprocessor. Hopefully, that will then spread to each Jaffa when they enter their repose cycles. We have hopes that freed Jaffa will ally themselves with us against Ba'al, just as Teal'c did, once they can decide for themselves whether Ba'al is their god."

"Go in, grab Sam, kill some autos, escape alive." Evan thought about it. "I really don't like our odds," he told Teyla. "Sell me on this plan of yours."

She smiled like she knew something he didn't. "Certainly."

o~0~O^O~0~o

"...and then we all fly back home and break open the victory champagne," Evan concluded, drumming _shave and a haircut, two bits_ on his knees with his palms. "It won't be easy. But we have advantages."

Cam leaned against the wall, smirking. Evan wondered, not for the first time, what weird alchemy created his team's personalities: if they'd been endemic to the unit types, or if they were an artefact of their programmed roles within the set, or what.

"I like the part where we blow Sheppard up," Cam said. "I've missed that. Back in the old days, we used to get to blow him up every single day."

"Twice on Sundays," Dex added. "He gets weird if his feet stay on the ground too long."

Sheppard made a rude hand gesture, but lazily. The way he'd hopped out of his seat when Evan had mentioned the skyhooks and the possible 60-story fatal drop had been kind of disturbing. Kind of adorable.

Sheppard had been subdued after confessing his feelings for Evan, and Evan had felt bad for having to let him down. Sheppard had indeed gone to talk to McKay, who Evan figured was the closest the set – his team, now – had to a father. McKay had been reluctant to tell Evan what they'd discussed, and Evan got angry, reminding him of just how much money he'd paid.

 _Fine,_ McKay had snapped, as if Evan was being disgustingly rude. _He asked about upgrades. If they were possible._

That wasn't what Evan had expected to hear. _What upgrades?_ he'd asked, his mind going to a fanciful place: daggers concealed in arm-sheathes, or poisonous fangs, or – more likely, knowing Sheppard– his own pair of mechanical wings.

 _He wants to be a real boy,_ McKay'd said. _Wanted to know if it was possible for him to eat food, sleep, that kind of thing. Why would anyone want to, was what I wanted to know. He said he'd been reading Dostoyevsky. You might want to confiscate his literature._

Evan felt bad, then, because he knew he was responsible, at least in part, for Sheppard's feelings. On the one hand, Sheppard was only on his team because he was an automaton with skills that the resistance needed. He was a tool, and one Evan was very grateful for. On the other hand, if Sheppard had been a flesh-and-blood man, Evan knew he'd have been tempted to tumble him into bed after their kiss.

Apparently, Sheppard thought so, too.

It was a mess, and the only way Evan could think of to resolve things completely was... to get rid of Sheppard. Return him to McKay, or have Elizabeth assign him to another team. But he didn't want to break up the set. And he _liked_ Sheppard's enthusiasm and wide-eyed joy in motion, his stubborn loyalty and the way he stood up for others.

So in one sense getting this mission was like getting back on track. They had a goal – a pretty damn compelling one. And they had a plan: who better to assault a Sky Palace than a group of aerialists?

If Sheppard was overly gleeful about being shot from an air-cannon for 50 meters to land on a tiny service balcony 200 meters up, well, more power to him, Evan thought. The thought of perching on a pulley-hung seat and riding it down the sky-line from the airship terrified the pants off him, but he'd be damned before he admitted that to his team.

"I'm trusting you guys to figure out how to get the cannon into the gondola," Evan told his team. "Without blowing anyone besides Sheppard up. And you realize there'll be air currents and recoil and all to deal with."

Cam gave Evan a look that was condescendingly pitying. "It's what we were made to do," he stated, and tapped his temple significantly. "We don't think like you do – hell, we don't even _see_ like you do."

"We see math," Sheppard said, and raised an eyebrow with a smirk. "And physics. Our sensors give us enough data on air and heat movements – "

"Plus other crap," Dex added.

Sheppard rolled his eyes. "We're machines made to calculate every factor in even the most complicated acrobatics. You _know that_." He looked at Evan, and a line formed between his brows, like he was confused.

"You're my team. It's _my_ job to worry about you." Evan paused, curious, and then figured there was no sense in not asking. "So if you see all that other stuff, what do I look like to you?"

"Naked," Dex said, straight-faced, but at Evan's reaction all three of them cracked up laughing.

Evan could admit that he'd walked right into that one, but he wasn't sure that Dex was lying to him. Maybe clothing was nothing more to them than a way of changing a human body's thermal map; maybe his trousers had never been able to hide how his dick reacted to Sheppard's well-formed arms and shoulders or the way he lit up when pleased. That would be embarrassing. But it made him wonder... if his appearance hadn't made Sheppard want to kiss him, then what had? Was it the loyalty programming combined with the injunction to protect humans, or did Evan just have really good... math?

Fortunately, over the few hours until dawn they were all too busy with preparations for the mission to keep teasing Evan about his too-human misgivings. The cannon had to be calibrated and blocked, and when Evan lay down to grab a half-hour of much-needed sleep, Cam and Dex took Sheppard down to the river and took turns firing him at the other side. 

Evan woke up to Cam telling Sheppard to stand still, damn it, and take his towel rub-down like a man. Pushing himself up on his elbows, Evan let himself observe the show: Sheppard, naked and wet, laughing and wriggling away from Cam's assault on his hair; Cam hauling him back; and Dex standing well away, wringing water out of Sheppard's clothes. Evan forgot, sometimes, that Sheppard was created only to appear superficially human; that the lean muscled chest had no nipples, and that Sheppard – like all of them – was as smooth between the legs as a bisque baby doll.

"You look like a drowned rat," Evan called, sitting up and shaking his head to get rid of the lingering drowsiness. "Stand still before you rust."

Sheppard's head snapped around, and at his look of consternation Evan almost felt bad for him.

"We have skin now," Dex said, snapping the trousers hard to straighten them before draping them over the back of a chair. "Doesn't rust."

"Catch a cold, then," Evan said easily. He went over to his bag and dug out his spare uniform. He tossed Sheppard the bundle underhanded and squinted at Cam. "What did you do?"

Cam let Sheppard pull on the shirt and then went back to drying his hair. "Figured out launch angles and how to carry the skyhooks properly. Without getting _someone's_ great big boots tangled up in 'em."

"Spiffing," Evan said through a yawn. "I'm going to grab a cup of tea, and then I guess we're ready?"

"As we'll ever be," Cam said. "Put your damn pants on already, Sheppard. Dr Carter doesn't want to see your skinny ass."

Evan's pants were a hand-length too short for Sheppard, but Sheppard seemed pleased with them. At least they weren't sopping with dirty river water, Evan figured.

When the mantelpiece clock chimed five, Evan gave the order to move out. The airship had been moved from the Nevada desert base to the defunct toy factory on the edge of the city, down by the freight tracks; all the machinery had been sold off years ago, and the interior gutted. The advantage to hiding their makeshift hanger in the bad part of town was that no one who saw them would go to the police, but at this hour most of the squatters were still huddled in the safety of their lean-tos and tents anyway.

Evan's crew had the dirigible already prepped and ready to go when they arrived, and the warehouse roof had been retracted, using the clever steam-powered process Zelenka had adapted from his studies into advanced pigeon coop designs – Elizabeth had told Evan that the man was actually a celebrity in the pigeon fanciers' world, and could have retired with a small fortune except for his desire to see the world rid of despotic kings and gods. Evan handed Amelia the case of program cards for the analytical navigation system as he entered the gondola and tried to ignore the enthusiastic way his team joined Chuck in tossing off the mooring cables. Amelia, perhaps taking pity on him, gave him the chore of retracting the collapsible staircase, but this turned out to require nothing more than the push of a button. Evan saw the handwork of McKay and Zelenka in all the details of the dirigible's construction.

He settled into one of the duralumin seats, figuring even if he was useless at least he could stay out of the way as the ship rose into the graying dawn. On a commercial flight, there would be bells ringing and perhaps even a band to send them off; but this flight was soundless until the gondola had cleared the warehouse hanger and Amelia engaged the propellers. Evan's repose lasted for a restless ten minutes, before his team swung in, full of plans to mount the cannon right across the central row of seats.

"Sorry," Sheppard said. He looked more gleeful than repentant. "Do you want to help unroll the bunting?"

Evan elbowed him in the side. "It's not polite to torment your team leader. Fear of sudden painful death is a perfectly natural phobia."

Sheppard shrugged. "I wouldn't know. I've been unnatural all my life."

For that, Evan had to give him another shove, because otherwise he'd be back to the unending mental debate on what made automatons different from humans. "Fine. I'll help you. But if I fall to my death, I will come back and haunt you, so help me, Sheppard."

"I don't believe in ghosts," Sheppard told him, and took Evan by the hand to lead him over to the promenade. "We're traveling at half-speed. You won't get blown away. Just catch hold of the ropes and fasten them here – " he indicated the rings set along the railing, and then gave Evan's fingers an encouraging squeeze. 

Evan wanted to protest that he'd been fighting for the resistance for years, that he was intimate with death and agony and desperation, that he certainly didn't need the manufactured pity of a clockwork man, a tool, a _toy_. But Sheppard's expression was so earnest that he couldn't hold it against him that he wasn't, technically, alive. He squeezed Sheppard's fingers back, and was rewarded with the sight of Sheppard struck speechless, eyes falling and a soft smile curving his mouth – if he'd had blood, Evan was sure he would have blushed bright red.

And then the moment was gone, Sheppard mounting the railing with careless ease, catching hold of a dangling cable and pulling himself up hand over hand. He called down, and Evan clutched at the railing with one hand as he grabbed the lowered rope with his other. As he pulled, the front corner of the bunting lowered inch by inch, until it was taut. He lashed the ropes tight, and moved on to the next, and then the next.

The use of buntings had been Teyla's idea, back when they'd first acquired the dirigible. _Who looks twice at an aerial advertisement?_ she'd explained, sketching out her idea on a chalkboard tablet she'd filched from Rodney. _We'll be able to travel anywhere in the city._

Evan had been assigned the task of designing the ads. Teyla had specified that they must be for false businesses, and shouldn't actually attract any customers. _Boring ads,_ she'd said, and Evan had sighed and said he never should have let her find out that he painted in his free time.

By the time the Sky Palace was in sight, the dirigible was disguised. On the starboard side it proclaimed that Evans & Smith made the best screws (and bolts too!), and on the port side there was a badly scanning ditty about Mrs Portobello's Digestive Cabbage Extract. Evan supposed his mother, if she were still alive, would be taken aback to discover that he'd taken the art lessons she'd given him and was using them for a stealth attack involving a cannon, automatons, and a bunting decorated with shabby dancing cabbages.

Once Ba'al was defeated, Evan told himself, he would retire to the countryside and make a name for himself with his painting. Maybe he'd design a few playbills, if his team decided to go back into the aerial circus business.

"Sir?" Amelia called, and Evan pulled himself back from his nervous wool-gathering. "Starting the approach."

_Well. Here we go._

"Yes, you need the damn helmet," Cam growled, and clapped it down over Sheppard's head. He fixed him with a narrow-eyed glare until Sheppard finally sighed and buckled the chin-strap. "Break your crystals and you're an oversized paperweight with bad hair."

"Thanks for caring," Sheppard said, and then yelped, "Hey!" as Dex grabbed him around the waist and spun him in a neat circle that ended with Sheppard over Dex's head, balanced on his palms.

"You can take the kids out of the circus," Cam said, giving Evan a grin as he made tiny adjustments to the angle of the cannon mouth while Dex shoved Sheppard in feet first, "but you can't take the circus out of the kids."

"Good luck." Evan knocked on the barrel with his knuckles. "We're counting on you."

"Easy as pie," Sheppard said indistinctly.

Dex tapped Evan on the shoulder. "Back off or you'll get your head blown off." He gave Evan a challenging grin.

Evan backed off. He knew just how nuts his team could be. Plus he wanted a good view of the action.

He'd expected there to be a lot of chatter, or at least a countdown, but everyone fell silent except for Amelia, who delivered terse updates on their position. At some signal Evan didn't catch, Cam swept the bunting aside, Dex threw the switch, and Sheppard flew like an arrow, trailing the sky-line behind as Cam played it out. At the apex, Sheppard tucked in like a diver, and his momentum carried him in a neat somersault over the edge of the service balcony. For a long moment he was out of view, but then his head – unhelmeted – popped up and he gave the signal.

Dex secured the sky-line, gave it a cursory tug, and then set the first of the pulley-hung seats on the line. Evan double-checked that his gear – goggles, pistol, dagger, and the rest – was attached to his waistcoat, took a deep breath, and stepped into Cam's hands to be thrust over the railing, clipped to the seat, and shoved cheerfully out over the hideous drop.

Evan swore the whole way from the dirigible to the balcony, resolutely not looking around. People were not meant to fly like birds, with open air on all sides. It was monstrous, it was perverse – 

– it was over, and Sheppard caught Evan in his arms, pulling him to safety and setting his feet on good solid cement before turning to catch Cam and Dex in turn. The second Dex landed he cut the sky-line, and the dirigible began drifting off. The entire op hadn't taken more than five minutes, Evan estimated. He credited himself with teaching his team their great stealth skills.

The balcony was accessed by a narrow door, which Evan had been prepared to jimmy open. But Cam tried the lever and the door opened easily. Dex shrugged, and looked pointedly out at the drop beyond the railing; which, okay, yeah. Probably no one bothered locking doors this high up.

Inside, they found themselves in a machine room, deafening with the sounds of pneumatics and steam. Dex slipped ahead, keeping to the shadows, pausing once before signaling for the team to follow. Teyla's intel had indicated that there was a ladder in the north-eastern corner which led to a catwalk. Two meters above the center of the catwalk, there was a service hatch, and from there it was a short easy walk – crawl, really – to the automaton laboratory on the sixty-second floor.

Evan had known that the plan was a hell of a lot easier on paper, but the utter insanity of it hit him when he realized the way he was getting through the hatch was to let Dex toss him up. From a catwalk barely thirty centimeters wide.

"Baby," Dex said, very quietly, as Evan's feet left the ground. Evan could feel the minute adjustments he was making to his stance to keep his balance; it was not reassuring.

From above, Sheppard reached down with both hands, and when Dex boosted Evan straight up, Sheppard grabbed hold. Evan remembered not to flail his feet uselessly, but that was about all the restraint he had. He was _never_ doing this again, he decided, letting Sheppard pull him up and set him aside. He was going to have gray hair after this.

Fortunately, that was the end of the acrobatic portion of the mission. Everything else was going to be sneaking and shooting, which were both things Evan was good at. He moved unsubtly to the front of the row, jabbing Dex with his elbow when he passed.

The air grew colder the closer they got to the laboratory, and pretty soon they could hear voices. In particular, a man's voice with an inhuman echo underlying his words: Ba'al. Evan glanced back at his team to see if they'd noticed, and found that they all had their weapons out. Well-trained.

There was a heavy iron grill over the vent into the room, but apparently it was to keep occupants from escaping, not to prevent anyone from getting in. Cam was able to access the bolts easily and loosen them until Dex, on Evan's signal, kicked the grill out.

Sheppard tossed in two smoke grenades that hit the floor at the same time as the grill, and Evan barely had time to pull his face mask on before smoke spewed out.

His team didn't need to see or breathe, but neither did the other automatons in the room. Evan had counted at least six of them, three simulacra of Ba'al and three soldiers. In addition, there were human technicians standing at various control stations along the wall. Evan hadn't been able to spot Sam, but Cam was in charge of finding her and keeping her safe. So Evan adjusted his goggles for the best visibility he could get and moved in a crouch towards the doorway.

Someone fired a pistol close at hand, and Evan ducked reflexively, shooting back when he saw a flash of the khaki fabric Ba'al's soldiers wore. He sensed movement behind him and spun, but still caught the heavy blow across the back of his shoulders, nearly enough to knock him over. He twisted, catching hold of his assailant and yanking him forward, getting a terrifying look at Ba'al's face right in front of his own before Dex loomed up out of the smoke and twisted Ba'al's head all the way around before ripping it off.

_One down, _Evan thought. Alarm bells began ringing, and he heard the whirring of great fans while at the same time all the smoke began to thin. He saw another automaton grappling with Sheppard on the far side of the room, but before he could go to help, his head exploded in blinding agony. He clawed at his mask, ripping it and his goggles off, but his brain was being roasted in a red-hot oven and he was fairly sure he was dying.__

__He managed to focus his eyes for a brief moment, and then wished he hadn't. Ba'al – another one; they were everywhere – was towering over him, and Evan realized he was sprawled on the ground. Around Ba'al's extended hand was a lethal-looking device, and every twitch of his fingers sent another stab of fire through Evan's skull. Evan gasped for breath and would have done anything – _anything_ – to make Ba'al stop._ _

__And then the waves of agony from Ba'al's hand device disappeared, and Evan blinked away tears impatiently. He saw Sheppard standing straight, his shoulders back, blocking Evan from Ba'al. Sheppard was jerking from whatever Ba'al was doing to him with the device, and eerily silent. Evan smelled ozone and hot metal._ _

__Three sharp dragon retorts came from behind Evan, and he struggled to get upright as gaping holes appeared in Sheppard's back._ _

__"Stop," Evan managed to get out, but Dex kept shooting at Ba'al through Sheppard until Sheppard fell to his knees, swayed, and collapsed to the side._ _

__"Evan," Dex yelled, sounding enraged. "That's the original, I can't shoot him."_ _

__Ba'al had been close enough to Sheppard that the shots from Dex's dragon had ripped his chest open, blood and bone mixing with shrapnel blown out from Sheppard, wires and splinters of gears. Even Ba'al's Goa'uld-enhanced healing was finding that hard to deal with._ _

__Evan took the pistol Dex thrust at him and put a bullet through Ba'al's forehead. He felt empty and sick._ _

__Dex was on his knees, pulling Sheppard up to sitting. Sheppard's head lolled hideously to the side. Evan saw the scorch marks Ba'al had branded onto Sheppard's chest and face, his optics cracked and melted down over his cheeks._ _

__"Aw, fuck," Evan said, crawling over and picking up one of Sheppard's lifeless hands. "We'll – McKay can fix him."_ _

__Dex squinted at him like he'd lost his mind. "This is scrap."_ _

__"Hey," Sheppard said, his voice as flat as a clockwork toy's._ _

__"Sorry," Dex said, and lifted Sheppard's chin. He looked at Evan and made a face. "We're not programmed to kill humans. Even the snaked ones."_ _

__"It's cool," Sheppard said. "Ba'al?"_ _

__"Dead."_ _

__"Evan?"_ _

__"I'm here." Evan let go of Sheppard's unresponsive hand and touched his cheek instead, running his thumb over Sheppard's lower lip. "You were brave."_ _

__"Worth it," Sheppard said, and smiled. "Part of... set. Love," he added, voice deepening as it wound down and then cut off with a click._ _

__Sheppard had never looked more like a machine than he did now, with his secret inner mechanisms exposed and eviscerated, the skin McKay had been so proud of ripped and burned, the graceful joy in movement and flight gone._ _

__"Don't die," Evan said, his heart twisted with fear and grief. "Sheppard, please."_ _

__Dex put an arm around Sheppard and rose to his feet, his hydraulics making the movement look effortless. He raised Sheppard up and draped him over his shoulder, and looked down at Evan._ _

__"Cam's got Dr Carter, she's destroying a bunch of Ba'al's crap. Gotta get out of here to make the pick up, though, so you tell them to hurry. I'll meet you on the roof," Dex said. "Look out for Ba'al's automatons. Not sure if there's more."_ _

__It was a sign of how badly the mission had gone that Dex was giving the orders now, and Evan just nodded and did as he was told, his mind numb with loss._ _

____

o~0~O^O~0~o

Evan stared at the painting he'd made of the team soaring through the air. Sheppard was in the foreground, hair blown back, arms outstretched, his legs spread wide as though riding the wind. Evan reached out and ran a finger down the arched line of Sheppard's torso and leg, from head to toe. Sheppard had loved this painting.

"Boss?" Cam was hovering in the doorway, Dex at his shoulder.

"Dex, Cam," Evan said, unable to drag his eyes away from the picture. "What is it?"

"Telegram from McKay," said Cam.

"What about?"

"Says you should come on over to his workshop," Cam said. 

"It's about Sheppard," added Dex. 

Evan sighed. "It's been weeks since…He said Sheppard was scrap metal."

Cam shrugged. "Don't know. He said something about a failsafe." He looked down and scuffed his boot. Dex poked him and Cam looked annoyed. "Yeah, yeah." He looked up. "So there was a thing…" 

"What?" Evan asked, irritated.

"When McKay made us, before he sold us." Cam shrugged. "He showed us." Dex held his left hand out and Cam tapped the little finger. "It comes off." He unscrewed Dex's finger. At the base, a metal rod protruded about an inch.

Dex folded the other fingers down so the rod jutted out. Cam turned back to Evan. "We've all got one. Told us if any of us were broke too bad to be fixed, we should stick this in their socket."

"What, their key-socket?" asked Evan, coming over and peering at Dex's hand "Why?"

"Dunno." Dex and Cam both shrugged, in unison; it was weird how they did that. "Anyhow," Cam said, "Dex did that with Sheppard." He waved a hand. "After…you know."

Dex nodded. "Got dizzy, then passed out. Woke up pretty soon."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Evan frowned at Dex.

Dex shrugged. "McKay said not to." Cam handed him his pinky finger and he screwed it back in place.

"Said he didn't want to get your hopes up," said Cam. "Said it was a long shot."

"Right," said Evan. It was probably nothing, just some whim of McKay's. He swallowed; his heartrate had kicked up. Untroubled by physiology, Cam and Dex regarded him expectantly. 

Evan capitulated. "We'll take an air-taxi; they're faster."

o~0~O^O~0~o

"Excuse me for trying to spare your feelings, Lorne," McKay said defensively. "The system's never been trialed before, so I had no idea if it would work."

Evan leaned back against the wall, arms crossed, watching McKay pace up and down, gesticulating. The workshop was cluttered, the floor filthy with ingrained dirt, metal scraps and solder. Motes of dust danced in beams of sunlight slanting down through tall narrow windows. Evan guessed the place had been a disused mill; it smelled faintly of lanolin.

Cam and Dex were prowling around a long table, on which McKay's latest automaton was shrouded in a sheet. Dex lifted one corner, curious, and McKay slapped his hand away. Dex grinned.

"What system?" Evan asked. "Cam called it a failsafe?" He tried to rein in his impatience. 

"Emergency back-up. The connection through the fifth digit linked Dex's and Sheppard's neural processors, through cables in their spinal cords." He looked sharply at Evan. "You know they've got an Ancient array?" He tapped his temple. "Here?" Evan nodded. "When a neural processor's shut down from trauma, the intact system's programmed to copy the damaged one across, through the link. Well, in theory. Like I said, I've never tested it, though I'm sure that a similar process is how Sheppard managed to save his set from Anubis."

"Copy it where?" Evan asked, focusing on what sounded most important.

"The array's made of crystals. It's very sophisticated, with a vast storage capacity." McKay waved at Cam and Dex. "It's why they've…grown. Developed in complexity. Adapted. Actually, well beyond my most optimistic predictions." He beamed at his creations. Cam gave an ironic bow and Dex raised an eyebrow. 

_Become human_ , thought Evan. _Learned to love._ Christ. He'd been such a fool.

"Anyway," McKay barreled on, oblivious to the stricken look on Evan's face. "So the intact array absorbs the extra data using compartmentalized encryption. Dex would have felt a little dizzy while that was happening–"

"Passed out," said Dex.

"Really? But not for long, right?" Dex nodded. 

"So, what, is Sheppard repairable? That what you're telling me?" Evan suppressed a surge of hope. 

"Oh no. No, Sheppard's structure was too badly damaged. I had to junk it." Evan winced. "Oh, I mean, sorry," added McKay hurriedly, flapping his hands at the look on Evan's face. "I got a replacement, of course. The same model, and I customized it the same as…" he waved a hand at Dex and Cam. "Even added a few…improvements." He flushed, cleared his throat, and hastened on. 

"No, that was straightforward. It was the encrypted data that was the problem. I'd extracted it from Dex when he brought Sheppard here – stored it in a blank array. That was simple enough, but it's taken weeks to decrypt it, and for quite some time I thought it might not be possible." McKay beamed at Evan. "I am, however, a genius."

"Stubborn, too," said Dex, smirking.

"I prefer to think of myself as _persistent_ ," corrected McKay, looking pleased. "Well, I suppose I should…really, there ought to be a fanfare or something." He turned and pulled the sheet from the still form on the table. 

Evan's breath caught in his throat. Sheppard lay there, lifeless but intact, in a black leotard. He looked identical, but as Evan moved forward, drawn helplessly to the table, he saw that the soldered repair marks to his neck and arm where he'd had old training injuries were gone, the artificial skin smooth under Evan's fingertips. He realized what he was doing, and drew his hand back, embarrassed.

"Perhaps you'd like to...?" said McKay, holding out the brass key. His voice was kind, and Evan realized McKay knew, and from the impatient indulgence on Cam and Dex's faces, that they knew as well.

He took the key in a daze, then looked up at McKay. "How do we know that he'll…that he's…"

"I'm not so cruel as to bring you all here without testing him first, Lorne," McKay huffed. "I've run extensive checks." He waved at Sheppard's unruly hairpiece. "As far as can be determined, his pre-damage state has been perfectly transcribed onto the new array."

Pre-damage state. Evan stared at the key in his hand, then at Sheppard's blank face. Would that include feelings? Feelings an automaton wasn't supposed to develop? Feelings for Evan? He wasn't sure he could bear it if that part of Sheppard's mind had been wiped in the transcription, but he'd have to. Sheppard had a right to consciousness, whether or not that awareness included any feelings towards Evan.

"3-2-1-1-2," said McKay quietly, and Evan bent, inserted the key, and entered the initiation code.

Sheppard's eyes flew open and locked on Evan's. "Hey," he said, and smiled.

"Hey," Evan said, relieved to be recognized, at least. He took Sheppard's arm, helping him sit up. 

Sheppard shot him an amused look. " 'm okay, you know." But he grabbed Evan's hand and held on.

"I already debriefed him," explained McKay. "Didn't want him to activate thinking he was still fighting Ba'al, and punch you in the face."

Sheppard was looking around. "Hey, Cam, Dex!" he said, and squeezed Evan's hand, then slipped free and bounded over to his friends. Dex grabbed him and lifted him off his feet, and Cam punched him in the arm. 

Evan watched them horse around, teasing each other as Cam brought Sheppard up to speed on the past few weeks. He looked at McKay, who was grinning, face flushed. "Models like Sheppard don't come cheap, McKay, as I know from experience. How'd you afford a replacement?"

"I, ah, well. I sold the yacht," admitted McKay. Evan shook his head in amusement. "What? It was a logical decision. I've no head for heights, and I'm not an expert steersman. I can just as well take taxis."

"Admit it, McKay, he's your friend as well as your creation. You didn't want to lose him." 

"Yes, well," said McKay, waving a hand towards Sheppard, who was in a huddle, murmuring intensely with the other two. "Goodness knows why, as he's extremely annoying. But he does seem to have grown on me, yes."

The team drew apart. Sheppard slapped Cam and Dex on their shoulders, then turned and sauntered back to Evan. There was an almost predatory look on his face. 

"Right," said McKay nervously. "I think it's time we…yes! Coffee! For me, anyway. Come on, chop chop!" and he herded a grinning Cam and Dex from the room. Dex turned back at the last moment and gave Evan a thumbs-up. Sheppard ignored him, intent on Evan. The door shut and their footsteps receded. 

"Is it…are you…?"

"Me?" Asked Sheppard. "Yeah. Last I can remember is Dex shooting Ba'al through me." He cupped Evan's face, his thumb caressing Evan's jaw. "Don't want to think about that right now."

"Hell, no," said Evan. He still had nightmares. "I never…these last few weeks. I thought you were…" He swallowed. "Missed you," he said, voice hoarse, and reached out for Sheppard, pulling him in and drawing Sheppard's head down to kiss him.

Evan broke the kiss off after a minute, gasping. "You may not need to breathe, but I do," he reminded Sheppard.

"Yeah, right," said Sheppard, grinning sheepishly. "Got carried away." He eyed Evan a little warily. "This okay?"

"I was wrong," said Evan. "I'm sorry. I was an idiot. I, you have to know I feel…the same."

"Yeah, Rodney told me. Guess he was right." Sheppard kissed him again, a soft press. His lips didn't feel like skin, not really, but they warmed up rapidly as Evan responded. 

"Shouldn't," whispered Evan. "Dumb to get all worked up when we can't, y'know." He gestured vaguely at Sheppard's sexless groin. His own pants were tight, uncomfortable. Sheppard reached down and cupped his cock, and Evan groaned. "Not fair on you…" he whispered, pushing helplessly into Sheppard's hand. 

"It's okay. Rodney couldn't give me pleasure centers or make me human, but I still want to see _you_ come. Long as I get to hold you after." He kissed Evan again, and Evan rocked into his grip.

Sheppard walked Evan back until he was up against the table, then lifted him easily onto it. The show of automaton strength sent a pulse of arousal through Evan, and Sheppard smiled, slow and hot. "You like being handled?"

"Yeah," whispered Evan, seeking out Sheppard's mouth again.

When he next surfaced, he realized Sheppard had pulled over a flat case that had been on the table, under the cover-sheet. He shot Sheppard a puzzled look.

"Rodney made me some…accessories," said Sheppard, with a smirk. He gestured at the case. "Take a look."

Evan pressed the release catch and opened the lid. Nestled in blue velvet padding were six dildos, of varying length and thickness. Three were covered in the same artificial skin as Sheppard's body, one was gleaming gold, one was crystal, and the last seemed carved out of obsidian. Evan gulped. "They're very…lifelike," he managed.

Sheppard raised his eyebrows. 

"I mean, not the, the colors," Evan tried. "But the…"

"Detailing?" Sheppard took the obsidian phallus out of the case. "I like this one best." 

It seemed in proportion to his frame, perfect from the flared glans to the veins coiling down its shaft. Sheppard ran a finger over the head, his face curious. Evan made a choked sound, and pressed a hand between his legs to relieve his own erection. 

Sheppard looked up and smiled. He reversed the prosthetic phallus, showing Evan a brass thread spiraling around the base. "It screws in," he said, then held it suggestively against the smooth, asexual curve of his groin. It jutted out obscenely. 

Sheppard pressed in between Evan's legs, rubbing the carved phallus against Evan's aching dick. He kissed Evan's neck, and bit lightly at his jaw. "So you can screw me, and then I can return the favor," he murmured into Evan's ear.

Evan shuddered. "I'm gonna kill McKay," he groaned. 

"Nah," said Sheppard, thumbing open Evan's pants and sliding his hand inside. "We might need him to make us some new toys."

the end


End file.
